By Gretchen Keiser

Filomena Quattrocchi, who is 83 years old, took a visitor’s arm and let herself be directed away from the noisy celebration and toward the quiet chapel.

A native of Philadelphia, Mrs. Quattrocchi has two sons and grandchildren and great-grandchildren in the Atlanta area so as she grew older she came south to live, moving into senior citizen housing. She said the place where she lived offered Lutheran church services and so, recently, she’d been attending those. She hadn’t yet seen the chapel in the new place where she’d be living starting this month-the first of the archdiocese’s special personal care homes for the elderly.

Rounding the corner in a hallway, she came into view of the chapel, with the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle and the warmly refurnished sanctuary and pews. “Please excuse me,” she said, abruptly stopping her friendly, flowing conversation. “I want to say a prayer.” She quietly knelt in the first pew in prayer, looking at once as if she were familiar with all she saw and at home.

“I feel I’m amongst my own,” she said a few minutes later, covering with those few words a great many aspects of the beautifully refurbished convent at Immaculate Heart of Mary parish, which is now this special home.

Fifteen elderly people, some in their seventies, some in their eighties and some in their nineties, moved into the home in November. On Sunday afternoon, Nov. 4, a blessing of the home and open house permitted dozens of guests to tour the redesigned and completely refurnished house, which is just off Briarcliff Road in northeast Atlanta at one end of the IHM parish grounds. For many years it was a convent for the Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart, who taught at IHM school. Andy many of the sisters came back to the open house to see how the place had changed.

A multi-level house, the main floor has a large kitchen, opening onto a dining area where small wooden tables, seating six or so people, are warmly grouped and decorated with plants. The living room adjacent to it, newly furnished with rose-colored couches and chairs, has built-in bookcases and corner tables for card games. The living and dining rooms in warm weather can be opened onto an enclosed back patio, which one woman volunteer diligently cleaned and planted with flowers and shrubs.

The chapel, where Mass will be offered frequently, a second parlor area and offices for the staff are also on the first floor. Two of the 15 residents will also live on the ground floor, where those rooms are reserved for the handicapped who have difficulty negotiating the stairs.

The rest of the residents have individual rooms on the upper floor, with bed and easy chair and reading table, and adjacent bathrooms shared by several residents. The quilts and bedspreads in each room, with complementary drapes, are all different, and were chosen by some of those most closely linked to the home. Sister Teresa Termini, C.S.J., who directs Services for the Elderly for Catholic Social Services; Sister Carol Bartol, G.N.S.H., who will be the daytime home manager, and Marsha Bond, social worker for the home, shopped all over Atlanta, pursuing bargains and a variety of colors and styles. Each room has a unique quality, as a result, and is already homey. Many relatives of the first residents also helped to get the home ready, hanging curtains and pictures.

It will be made more individual by the people moving in. Mrs. Cathryn Franke, 86, a widow who is among the first residents, admired her room, but confided, “My little desk will fit here just perfectly,” pointing to the space alongside her bed, “and my upholstered chair over here,” by the closet.

The personal care home is intended to serve “frail elderly” – a special group of people who need some help in daily living tasks, such as fixing meals and taking medication, but who do not need the 24-hour skilled care of a nursing home. Personal care homes are an “in between” place needed by many elderly, but not enough homes are available. And this is the first to be opened in Atlanta under Catholic auspices.

Money for the new home came from the recently held Capital Funds Drive in the archdiocese known as Campaign ’83. Personal care homes for the elderly are one of four major projects funded by the drive.

People from throughout the archdiocese contributed to the project and the home is open to all applicants who fit the profile of those who can be helped by a personal care home rather than a nursing home. The first group of residents, who were reviewed on a first-come, first served basis this summer and fall, happen to be all Catholics and from 12 different parishes in the archdiocese, including Transfiguration, St. George’s in Newnan, St. Philip Benizi, St. Anthony’s, IHM and the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. There are both men and women residents.

In addition to Sister Bartol and Marsha Bond, the staff for the home will include Burma Benedict-Hahn, R.N., as a live-in manager, and Barry Blacklidge as a weekend home manager. Those who live there will share meals and companionship and will be helped with medication and simple health needs. The home has its own laundry area also.

Residents will contribute to the home on a sliding scale basis which was determined before they entered. It is designed so that there is always a mixture of people from different income groups and always room reserved for some people with physical handicaps. The Capital Funds Drive provided money to renovate the convent and to establish an endowment fund for the future.

Mrs. Franke, who is a diabetic who needs daily insulin injections, but otherwise is able to care for herself, noted that she would be spending half as much to live each month in the personal care home as she spent at the nursing home where she has been for five years.

“I think it’s great, just great,” she said. It wasn’t just the financial difference that she anticipated. With only 15 residents at the home, “It’ll be like a family,” Mrs. Franke said. Noting her own good health, she said, “I can do for others.”

Sister Termini, who has been working toward a Catholic facility for the elderly for over 15 years, and Father Jacob Bollmer, director of Catholic Social Services, were visibly moved during the open house. “Last night I could hardly say Mass” for the volunteers preparing the house for its opening, said Father Bollmer. “I told Sister Teresa, ‘Whatever you do, don’t cry.’”

The opening was a personal milestone, Father Bollmer said, since he began his social services work with the elderly, and it is one of four major goals for CSS that he had in mind when he was assigned to head the agency.

More than that, he admitted, “I just love old people.” He was circulating at the open house, talking to the future residents about their backgrounds and finding out that several of them were eager to get into the kitchen and make a good ethnic meal for the group. “We’ll have First Friday Mass, followed by an ethnic dinner,” he enthused, “and a card party until one in the morning. A real celebration of life!”

Those who live in the home will also be drawn into parish life. On alternate Sundays, Mass is scheduled to be celebrated in the personal care home; the following week the residents will be taken up to IHM church for Mass. Father Bollmer plans to stop by the home and visit and say Mass and other priests are invited to do so also.

Once this home is running smoothly, the CSS group which is responsible for overseeing it will begin looking toward southwest Atlanta in the area of St. Paul of the Cross parish to do a feasibility study for a second personal care home.